


Servants of the Sea

by Issay



Series: Character Studies [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Character Study, Gen, No Plot/Plotless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-14 02:36:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1249600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Issay/pseuds/Issay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can't live in Nassau and not hear the call. Flint reflects on the kings and servants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Servants of the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> I read my way through our tag here and decided we needed something that doesn't have any pairing. So here it is - it's little but maybe someone will like it. Please, be aware that English is not my native language! :)

The sea is calling out to him. Every night he spends on a solid ground and not on a wooden deck of the ship, he hears the call. It's a note in the wind or maybe a tug in his heart or the salty taste on his wife's lips. It's a constant in his life. This reminder of what he loves most in this world and what he hates. What will kill him one day, he's pretty sure of that one. It's a siren's call, ever present and timeless. If he'll be lucky enough to see old age, he's sure that when he's sitting on a front porch of his home (or, more realistically, stuck in a gutter somewhere in Nassau or Port Royal, dying of alcohol poisoning or some illness) he will still hear it. And maybe, just maybe, he'll be lucky enough to die at the sea.

He understands men like Vane. Tough, dim eyed, ruthless men who are the exact kind the see is calling to. They will all die in the end, like rats on their pieces of wood thrown into the barrel filled with water. Men who can't stay away from the sea so they make it their life and death. They love it, wed it, curse and hate it but never think about leaving. Once a pirate, always a pirate, says Vane. And maybe he's right but Flint sees a pirate nation, people with hope and pride and tradition. What else makes people a nation? They all hear the call and at some point in their lives they all answered. Isn't that enough?

But he also saw the people who hear the call but decide to stay. Or have to stay, like poor Eleanor who every day looks towards the sea with such longing in her eyes. He understands her, in a way. They are both bound by expectations of others and are refused a right to fail. She is surrounded by people who want something from her, all of them. Max wants her love and devotion no matter what happens, Vane wants her in bed, her father wants her to be like him. Flint answers to his men. They have families, needs, cravings. And he feels the weight of it, the terrible burden that threatens to grind him into the sand of some lone island where they'll leave him to die or maybe a beach in Nassau. The shipwreck place? His own home? He knows the price he'll pay if he fails. Eleanor knows hers.

There are others, too. Satellites. Worms feeding off living flesh. Sometimes they serve, sometimes they use, but all of this only for one master - profit. He's seen a lot of people like this in Nassau. Max. Old Guthrie. Anne Bonny. Some men in his crew. They are like dogs waiting for a juicy bone or a dead body and they don't care which comes first. He hates them secretly. It's not easy, not being able to tell what he thinks about it be he needs them. And to have them is to lure them with an illusion of getting what they want most.

He's a bit torn, himself. He is one of the captains (at least for now and only as long as his men don't turn on him) so he is a man of the sea, sworn to it like to a bride. It's a love and hate marriage, really. He feels so alive, so right on his place when he steps on the deck and stands under the great white of sails. There are days when he can't imagine doing anything but this, being completely free. But then he realizes that it's not freedom, it's a burden. He has obligations and that itself is slavery. They all feel it, every single captain he's ever talked about this after a bottle or two. There are sharks in the water and if they'll smell blood, they'll come without mercy.  
So there is the second part of the nightmarish duality. The one that would like to set fire to those beautiful sails and just leave. Settle somewhere deep in the continent and to stop hearing the murmur of the ocean every day. Not to be tempted to go there again.

Flint is not sure which side will win but he feels in his bones that it is coming. So he will just have to wait - he can do that, if he won't hang from the mast one day - and see.


End file.
